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(CNN)Dave Brubeck was taking a horse ride with his father one day when he saw something that would haunt him for the rest of his life.

He was along on a cattle-buying trip with his father, Pete, a rancher in Northern California. Pete Brubeck asked an African-American cowboy who everyone called "Shine" to come over and greet his son.

Pete Brubeck then asked Shine to open his shirt. Brubeck, then only 6, watched as Shine unbuttoned his shirt to reveal a brand on his chest: He had been marked like cattle. Shine was the first black person Brubeck had ever seen. A furious Pete Brubeck told his son that "something like this never should happen again."

"It had an impact on me I'll never forget," Brubeck told journalist Hedrick Smith for a documentary called "Rediscovering Dave Brubeck."

"I thought, 'What can I do about this?' It's like my dad (was) telling me to do something about it."

Brubeck, the pioneering jazz pianist who died this month at 91, did more to help people like Shine than most people realize. The tributes that poured in after his death tended to focus on the same themes: He was the jazz legend whose "Dave Brubeck Quartet" gave the world the jazz standard "Take Five," he stretched the boundaries of jazz and was a champion for civil rights.

Brubeck, though, was bigger than all of that. His life and music say more about this country's future than its past. He and an entire generation of white, black and Latino jazz musicians helped create one of the nation's first multicultural communities. They offered a snapshot of what this nation is becoming, like it or not.

To make that world possible, Brubeck and other white jazz musicians did something remarkable. They joined a jazz community where white men were the minority -- and whiteness was seen as a liability, not the norm.

How did Brubeck do it, and how did he thrive? Delve into his interviews and his music, and the clues emerge.

Seeing genius in a 'servant'

He listened to the story of "the other."

It had an impact on me I'll never forget.

Dave Brubeck, jazz pianist, on pivotal childhood meeting

Many fans know this story. Brubeck's breakout year came in 1954. He was touring with Duke Ellington, one of America's greatest composers and a jazz titan.

One day, Brubeck heard a knock on his hotel door. He opened it to find Ellington, smiling and holding several copies of Time magazine. Brubeck was on the cover. His heart sank. Ellington was his friend. He knew that Time had also been interviewing Ellington, and Brubeck thought the jazz composer deserved the honor over him.

"I wanted to be on the cover after Duke," Brubeck told the narrator in Ken Burns' epic documentary on jazz. "The worst thing that could have happened to me was that I was there before Duke, and he was delivering the news to me."

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People we've lost in 2012 – Harry Carey Jr., an actor best known for his characters in Western movies, died December 27 at age 91. He had appeared in nearly 100 films during his career.

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People we've lost in 2012 – Retired Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, who commanded coalition forces during the Gulf War, died Thursday, December 27, a U.S. official said. He was 78.

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People we've lost in 2012 – Character actor Charles Durning died December 24 at 89, according to his family. He won Tony and Golden Globe awards and received two Oscar nominations as best supporting actor, including for "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas" (1982) and "To Be or Not to Be (1983).

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People we've lost in 2012 – Actor Jack Klugman, best known for playing messy sportswriter Oscar Madison in TV's "The Odd Couple," died December 24 at age 90. Klugman won two Emmys for his role in the sitcom, plus won an Emmy in 1964 for a role in "The Defenders." Klugman also starred in "Quincy, M.E." as medical examiner Dr. R. Quincy from 1976 to 1983.

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People we've lost in 2012 – Conservative jurist Robert H. Bork died on December 19 at age 85 at his home in Virginia, sources close to his family told CNN. Bork was best known for being nominated to the Supreme Court in 1987, only to be rejected after a contentious confirmation battle.

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People we've lost in 2012 – U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, the U.S. Senate's second-longest serving member, has died at 88, his office announced December 17.

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People we've lost in 2012 – Indian sitar maestro Ravi Shankar died December 11 at age 92. The legendary sitar player brought Indian music to the West and taught Beatle George Harrison how to play the stringed instrument. Among his survivors is daughter Norah Jones, the pop and jazz singer.

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People we've lost in 2012 – Singer Jenni Rivera, 43, died when the small plane she was traveling in crashed in the mountains of northern Mexico, her brother told CNN. The plane wreckage was found Sunday, December 9.

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People we've lost in 2012 – Jazz pianist Dave Brubeck, 91, died December 5 from heart failure, said his manager, Russell Gloyd.

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People we've lost in 2012 – Puerto Rican boxer Hector "Macho" Camacho died on November 24. A gunman shot him in the face in front of a bar in his hometown of Bayamon.

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People we've lost in 2012 – Actor Larry Hagman, who played scheming oil tycoon J.R. Ewing on "Dallas," died November 23 of complications from cancer. He was 81.

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People we've lost in 2012 – Native American activist Russell Means died October 22 from throat cancer, an Oglala Lakota Sioux nation representative said.

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People we've lost in 2012 – Former Sen. George McGovern, 90, died on October 21. McGovern was the Democratic nominee for president in 1972. He ran against incumbent Richard Nixon and won only 17 electoral votes to Nixon's 520. He served in the U.S. Senate and House representing South Dakota before his loss for the top office.

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People we've lost in 2012 – Former U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania died at age 82 of complications from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma on October 14 at his home in Philadelphia, his family said. Specter served five terms as a Republican senator and switched political affiliation in 2009.

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People we've lost in 2012 – TV and radio personality Gary Collins -- seen here in "Hour Magazine" and also known for his roles in television series including "The Sixth Sense" and "The Wackiest Ship in the Army" -- died on October 13, according to officials in Harrison County, Mississippi. He was 74.

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People we've lost in 2012 – Former NFL player and actor Alex Karras died on October 10 in Los Angeles, a family spokesman said. He was 77.

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People we've lost in 2012 – Legendary singer Andy Williams, known for his smooth voice and classics such as "Moon River," died after a yearlong battle with bladder cancer at his Branson, Missouri, home on September 25. He was 84.

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People we've lost in 2012 – Actor John Ingle, who played patriarch Edward Quartermaine on ABC's "General Hospital," died September 15 at age 84.

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People we've lost in 2012 – Michael Clarke Duncan, nominated for an Academy Award for his role in the 1999 film "The Green Mile," "suffered a myocardial infarction on July 13 and never fully recovered," a written statement from Joy Fehily said. He died September 3 at age 54.

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People we've lost in 2012 – Hal David, the lyricist behind such standards as "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head" and "What the World Needs Now is Love," died September 1 at age 91.

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People we've lost in 2012 – Neil Armstrong, the American astronaut who made "one giant leap for mankind" when he became the first man to walk on the moon, died August 25. He was 82.

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Helen Gurley Brown – Helen Gurley Brown, former editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan magazine and author of "Sex and the Single Girl," died on August 13 at age 90.

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People we've lost in 2012 – Puppeteer Jerry Nelson, famous for lending his voice to Muppets on "Sesame Street," "The Muppet Show" and "Fraggle Rock," died August 23. He was 78.

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People we've lost in 2012 – Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, a strongman in the troubled Horn of Africa and a key United States ally, died on August 20 at the age of 57.

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People we've lost in 2012 – Comedian Phyllis Diller, known for her self-deprecating humor, died "peacefully in her sleep" on August 20. She was 95.

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People we've lost in 2012 – Film director Tony Scott left notes in his car and office before plunging to his death from the Vincent Thomas Bridge in San Pedro, California, a Los Angeles County coroner official said. Scott died August 19 at age 68.

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People we've lost in 2012 – Actor Ron Palillo, who played class clown Arnold Horshack on the 1970s television comedy "Welcome Back, Kotter," died from a heart attack at age 63 on August 14.

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People we've lost in 2012 – Marvin Hamlisch, a prolific American composer, died August 6 after a more than four-decade career that spanned film, music, television and theater. He was 68.

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People we've lost in 2012 – Writer Gore Vidal died July 31 of complications from pneumonia, a nephew said. He was 86.

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People we've lost in 2012 – At 69, actress Lupe Ontiveros, who co-starred in the hit films "Selena" and "As Good As It Gets," died of liver cancer on July 26.

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People we've lost in 2012 – Sherman Hemsley, who played the brash George Jefferson on "All in the Family" and "The Jeffersons," died July 24 at age 74.

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sally ride obit – Sally Ride, the first American woman to fly in space, died after a 17-month battle with pancreatic cancer on July 23. She was 61.

People we've lost in 2012 – Keyboard player Jon Lord, who fused classical and heavy metal to make Deep Purple one of the biggest rock bands in the world, died July 16 after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 71.

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People we've lost in 2012 – Oscar-winning actress Celeste Holm died at her home in New York on July 15 at the age of 95. Here Holm, center, appears in 1950's "All About Eve" with Garry Merrill, from left, Bette Davis and Hugh Marlow.

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People we've lost in 2012 – On July 8, film and television actor Ernest Borgnine, who won an Academy Award for his portrayal of a lovelorn butcher in 1955's "Marty," died at age 95.

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People we've lost in 2012 – Actor Andy Griffith, who played folksy Sheriff Andy Taylor in the fictional town of Mayberry, died July 3 at the age of 86.

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People we've lost in 2012 – Nora Ephron, the screenwriter and director whose sharp, edgy romantic comedies featuring strong women took her to the top ranks of a film industry mostly dominated by men, died June 26 at age 71.

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Ray Bradbury – Science fiction author Ray Bradbury, whose imagination yielded classic books such as "Fahrenheit 451," "The Martian Chronicles" and "Something Wicked This Way Comes," died at 91 on June 5.

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People we've lost in 2012 – Former "Family Feud" host Richard Dawson died on June 2 at the age of 79.

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Doc Watson – Bluegrass guitarist and singer Doc Watson died at 89 on May 29 after struggling to recover from colon surgery.

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People we've lost in 2012 – Robin Gibb, one of three brothers who made up the Bee Gees, the group behind "Saturday Night Fever" and other iconic sounds from the 1970s, died on May 20. He was 62. Gibb died "following his long battle with cancer and intestinal surgery," a statement said.

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People we've lost in 2012 – Donna Summer, the "Queen of Disco" whose hits included "Hot Stuff," "Bad Girls," "Love to Love You Baby" and "She Works Hard for the Money," died May 17. She was 63.

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People we've lost in 2012 – Mexican author Carlos Fuentes died on May 15 at the age of 83.

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People we've lost in 2012 – Donald "Duck" Dunn, left, the bass player who laid the musical floor beneath soul legends like Booker T. and the MGs, Sam and Dave and Otis Redding, died May 13. He was 70.

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People we've lost in 2012 – Carroll Shelby, famous for creating high-performance road and racing cars bearing his name, died on May 10 in Dallas. He was 89. His name is probably most associated with the Cobra and the Shelby line of Ford Mustang-based performance cars.

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People we've lost in 2012 – British-Israeli hairdresser Vidal Sassoon died on May 9 at the age of 84.

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Maurice Sendak – Maurice Sendak, author of "Where the Wild Things Are" and illustrator of nearly 100 books, died at age 83 on May 8.

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People we've lost in 2012 – George Lindsey, the actor who portrayed the country-bumpkin mechanic Goober Pyle on "The Andy Griffith Show," died May 6 after a brief illness, his family said. He was 83.

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People we've lost in 2012 – Adam "MCA" Yauch, a founding member of the pioneering rap band Beastie Boys, died on May 4 after a nearly three-year battle with cancer. He was 47.

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People we've lost in 2012 – Levon Helm, the drummer, multi-instrumentalist and singer for The Band who kept the band's heart for more than three decades, died "peacefully" April 19, according to his record label, Vanguard Records. He was 71.

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Junior Seau – Junior Seau, linebacker for the San Diego Chargers, died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound on May 2.

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People we've lost in 2012 – Television host Dick Clark poses for a portrait circa 1968. The longtime host of the influential "American Bandstand" died April 18 after suffering a heart attack. He was 82.

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People we've lost in 2012 – Former Algerian President Ahmed Ben Bella died on April 11 at the age of 96.

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Mike Wallace – Mike Wallace, who spent four decades as a hard-hitting, provocative news correspondent on CBS' "60 Minutes," died at 93 on April 7.

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Thomas Kinkade – Artist Thomas Kinkade, the self-described "painter of light," died from accidental overdose of alcohol and Valium at age 54 on April 6.

People we've lost in 2012 – Earl Scruggs, whose distinctive picking style and association with Lester Flatt cemented bluegrass music's place in popular culture, died March 28 of natural causes at a Nashville hospital. He was 88.

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People we've lost in 2012 – Doobie Brothers drummer Michael Hossack died at his home in Dubois, Wyoming, on March 11 at the age of 65 after battling cancer for some time.

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People we've lost in 2012 – Jimmy Ellis, who belted out the dance anthem "Disco Inferno" in the 1970s for the Trammps, died on March 8 at 74 years old. Here, the Trammps in 1973: From left, Earl Young, seated, Harold Wade, Jimmy Ellis, Stanley Wade and Robert Upchurch.

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Andrew Breitbart – Andrew Breitbart, editor and founder of the conservative blog BigGovernment.com, died at age 43 of natural causes on March 1. His posting of an explicit photo U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner sent to Twitter followers led to Weiner's downfall.

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People we've lost in 2012 – Davy Jones, whose charming grin and British accent won the hearts of millions of fans on the 1960s television series "The Monkees," died on February 29 at age 66.

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Gary Carter – Hall of Fame catcher for the New York Mets Gary Carter lost a battle to brain cancer at age 57 on February 16.

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People we've lost in 2012 – New York Times reporter Anthony Shadid died of an asthma attack in Syria on February 16.

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People we've lost in 2012 – The news broke on the eve of the Grammy Awards, the music industry's biggest night: The woman with the pitch-perfect voice who once reigned as the queen of pop at the awards show had died. Whitney Houston was found dead by her bodyguard on February 11. She was 48.

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People we've lost in 2012 – The last known surviving veteran of World War I died on February 4. Florence Green, 110, was a waitress in Britain's Royal Air Force.

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People we've lost in 2012 – Don Cornelius, the founder of the "Soul Train" television show, was found dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to his head on February 1. It was later ruled a suicide. He was 75.

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People we've lost in 2012 – Robert Hegyes, known for his role as Juan Epstein on the '70s sitcom "Welcome Back, Kotter," died on January 26. He was 60.

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People we've lost in 2012 – Actor James Farentino, whose television acting career began in the early 1960s, died on January 24. He was 73.

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Joe Paterno – Longtime Penn State Coach Joe Paterno -- whose tenure as the most successful coach in major college football history ended abruptly in November 2011 amid allegations that he failed to respond forcefully enough to a sex abuse scandal involving a former assistant -- died January 22, his family said. He was 85.

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People we've lost in 2012 – Etta James, whose assertive, earthy voice lit up such hits as "The Wallflower," "Something's Got a Hold on Me" and the wedding favorite "At Last," died on January 20. She was 73.

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EXPAND GALLERY

The black experience was initially foreign to Brubeck. He was born in Northern California and grew up on a cattle ranch near the Sierra Mountains. But even as his fame eclipsed many of his black musical mentors, he continually talked about the musical debt he owed to them.

The virtuosity of black artists like Ellington, Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald sometimes did what a civil rights march or a court decision couldn't do -- force whites like Brubeck to see the humanity of black people.

One of the most famous jazz conversion stories comes from Ken Burns' "Jazz" documentary.

In 1931, Charles Black was a white teenager who decided to go hear Armstrong play in an Austin, Texas, hotel. He knew nothing about jazz, but something shifted in him as he watched a rapturous Armstrong perform.

"He was the first genius I'd ever seen," Black recalled. "It is impossible to underestimate the significance of a 16-year-old southern boy seeing genius for the first time in a black person. We literally never saw a black man in anything but a servant's capacity.

"Louis opened my eyes wide and put to me a choice: Blacks, the saying went, were 'all right in their place,' but what was the place of such a man, and of the people from which he sprung?"

Black would go on to join a team of lawyers that successfully convinced the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the segregation of students based on race in the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education decision.

He didn't look like a jazz musician. When he led the quartet, he looked like a chemistry professor who accidentally found himself behind the piano. With his black horn-rimmed glasses, goofy grin and his square suits, the affable Brubeck looked like Mr. Normal.

Dave Brubeck capitalized on the differences between musicians in his group to create classic music.

Yet Brubeck was a wild man behind the keyboard. He was like a musical mad scientist -- combining unconventional time signatures and musical styles from other cultures that wouldn't appear to work but did.

He sought out the same combustible mix in his famous quartet. Many jazz leaders surrounded themselves with musicians who they had an almost telepathic rapport with onstage. But Brubeck's Quartet clashed.

Brubeck was known for pounding the piano with thunderous chords. His saxophonist, Paul Desmond, played with a light and lyrical style that was so exquisite that one critic said he left "a trail of honey in the air." And then there was his drummer, Joe Morello, a proud man with superb technique who wanted to be showcased more.

The group fought musically and personally. Morello clashed with Desmond. Desmond clashed with Brubeck. They were all so different, but Brubeck made it work.

He wasn't threatened by differences. They inspired him, said Ted Giola, a jazz historian and author.

"It's to Dave Brubeck's credit that he was able to hear these musicians that played very differently from him and was able to see that by taking them and getting their different sounds, he was adding, not subtracting," Giola said in the documentary "Rediscovering Dave Brubeck."

"Dave had an instinct for differences and how that was going to add to his music."

Jazz and democracy

It must be said, though, that the jazz world that Brubeck helped create wasn't a racial utopia.

Black artists were exploited. White audiences gravitated to some white jazz artists who didn't have the talent of black artists. Even some white artists like Brubeck were looked at with disdain by some black musicians.

Yet Carey also said that when it came time to play, a lot of those divisions evaporated because of something inherent in jazz: Most jazz musicians don't care how you look. They just care about how you play.

"The bandstand is a great equalizer," he said. "You're going to get the best guy or woman for the gig. It doesn't matter what they look like."

Brubeck applied the same principle to his music. He led the first integrated band in the U.S. Army during World War II. He hired a black man, Eugene Wright, to be his quartet's bassist. The jazz world that Brubeck moved in was full of cross-racial and cross-cultural fertilizations.

They weren't just ahead of their time; in some respects, they were ahead of our time.

Some of the biggest jazz records came from artists who built friendships across racial and ethnic lines. The singer Frank Sinatra recorded with and relentlessly championed black artists like Fitzgerald and Count Basie.

The white saxophonist Stan Getz kicked off the bossa nova craze with his recordings with Brazilians Astrud and Joao Gilberto. The jazz album classic "Kind of Blue" was spawned by the relationship between Bill Evans, a white, mild-mannered pianist who looked like a tax accountant, and the pugnacious black trumpeter Miles Davis.

Jazz lore says that initially some of the black members of Davis' band didn't want Evans to join the group because he was white, but Davis insisted because he loved Evans' "quiet fire."

Jazz titan Duke Ellington presented Brubeck with one of his most painful and triumphant moments.

"Kind of Blue" went on to become the best-selling jazz album of all time.

"He was a guy who looked like a stereotypical white nerd," Carey says of Evans. "But he could play. ... What he played was so much bigger than his appearance."

This egalitarian tradition in jazz -- everyone is equal on the bandstand -- has led some to compare it to democracy. The jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis once said that nothing captures the democratic process as perfectly as jazz.

"Jazz means working things out musically with other people. You have to listen to other musicians and play with them even if you don't agree with what they're playing. It teaches you the very opposite of racism and anti-Semitism. It teaches you that the world is big enough to accommodate us all."

Brubeck was a champion for democracy as well as jazz. It's often forgotten that many of the exotic rhythms he infused into his music came from tours his quartet took of the Middle and Far East. The State Department sponsored these tours to promote democracy during the Cold War.

Brubeck often compared jazz to democracy, saying both challenged individuals to express their freedom while being disciplined enough to respect the freedom of others.

Brubeck's words about jazz and democracy take on even more meaning with the recent presidential election.

It was a bruising election season and it revealed that the nation is experiencing profound demographic and social changes. Attitudes toward gay marriage are shifting, a black president was re-elected to a second term, and the U.S. Census Bureau predicts that the country will have a majority-minority population by 2043.

Perhaps some Americans feel like traditional jazz purists felt after they first heard Brubeck's exotic rhythms on his groundbreaking 1959 "Time Out" album: My world is changing, and I don't know these tunes.

David Simon, the creator of the HBO series, "The Wire," captured some of that angst in an essay he wrote right after the election entitled "Barack Obama and The Death of Normal."

"America will soon belong to the men and women -- white and black and Latino and Asian, Christian and Jew and Muslim and atheist, gay and straight -- who can walk into a room and accept with real comfort the sensation that they are in a world of certain difference, that there are no real majorities, only pluralities and coalitions."

"We are all the 'other' now," he wrote.

Brubeck entered that world over half-a-century ago.

He was a white man in a world dominated by black artists, but he wasn't threatened by the differences. He respected tradition but he wasn't afraid to subvert it if it meant growth. He learned how to listen to, and be inspired by the music of "the other."

Brubeck was often called the "Ambassador of the Cool," but he was more.